On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:00:43 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > [ok i'm going to do another cross-post in a bit which will give some > background and also perhaps some other topics for discussion, but i > wanted to cover this first. apologies for people for whom this is > just noise] > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 7:01 PM, <omalleys@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >>> the xilinx zynq-7000 or similar (dual core Cortex A9 + FPGA). The >>> idea >>> is to have an OGP GPU in firmware in FPGA. In terms of the power >>> budget, >>> it seems to work relatively sanely considering what it is, and it >>> is as >>> ideal as it gets as far as openness and flexibility goes. >>> >>> I just thought it's worthy of a mention. >> >> It does seem outlandish, but it is kind of cool. Is it going to give >> enough >> 3d speed? The next gen tegra is supposed to have a 24 core GPU. > > if nvidia have a published announcement of their plans to release a > fully free-software-compliant 3D driver to match the proprietary > hardware, then that would be brilliant news [about their next gen > GPU]. > > about the zynq idea: it actually doesn't matter if it's "enough". > the very fact that free software developers - and people who want to > be free software developers - around the world could even _remotely_ > consider buying one of these for an affordable price instead of $750 > for the present OGP card means that more people can at least begin to > try to address the unbelievably wide and very discouraging gap > between > us and proprietary 3D hardware. > > the NREs on producing a set of masks are _only_ $250,000 if you are > a > taiwanese company asking TSMC, but for everyone else they're at least > $2 million. the development costs if you use off-the-shelf tools > before you even _get_ to the point where you can ask a fab to produce > those masks spiral out of control (Mentor Graphics charges something > like $250,000 per month or maybe per week per user; NREs for > peripheral hard macros can be $50k to $100k each etc. etc.), taking > the total development costs in many cases to well above $USD 30 > million. > > and that's excluding all that "proprietary software" which of course > is utterly useless without the corresponding hardware but, because of > USA Accountancy Rules, where "IP" can be added to the books to > increase the value of a company, there's a strong financial > disincentive to consider just "givvin it aww away 4 fwee". > > and here we are with a CPU which could well be around the $25 - $30 > mark in large enough volumes, presented with the possibility to say > "**** u all, you proprietary GPU companies and your greed, fear, > patent warfare and lack of willingness to collaborate and cooperate". > > ok maybe not those exact words but you know what i mean :) I quite like the wording, actually. :) Gordan _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
